The left, predictably, blames wicked businessmen, saying the banking system has become a fiefdom of big business. Rubbish! The banks were indeed fiefdoms of big business before 1969. Then Indira Gandhi nationalized them to make them the fiefdoms of politicians. That’s the root of today’s crisis.

Indira and her socialist acolytes claimed bank nationalization was essential for the state to capture the commanding heights of the economy, and channel bank lending to top social priorities. Actually, she could have ordered private banks to lend to favoured sectors (as is done today) without nationalization.

Her real aim was to control all big finance, emasculating the businessmen and maharajas leading the Swatantra Party, the main opposition party after the 1967 election. She nullified the treaties Sardar Patel had signed with the princes to persuade them to accede to India in 1947. She abolished their privy purses and made them taxable, bankrupting them.

She raised income-tax rates to 97.75%, added a wealth tax of 3.5%, nationalized several other industries, and made it clear to businessmen that dissenters would be crushed. The ploy succeeded. The Swatantra Party collapsed, and businessmen crawled.

However, the poverty ratio did not fall at all after 1947 till 1983. Meanwhile, the population doubled, so the absolute number of poor doubled. That terrible human cost exposes the fraudulent intent and outcome of Indira’s Garibi Hatao policies, spearheaded by bank nationalization.

Did nationalization spur lending to “the people”? As Orwell said, in socialism all are equal, but some are more equal than others. Most equal of all was Sanjay Gandhi, Indira’s son, who sought unending loans for his dud car project. Anyone opposing Sanjay — including R K Hazari, deputy RBI governor, and R K Talwar, chairman of the State Bank of India — got marching orders. After that, bank chiefs obediently followed orders (official or unofficial) from top politicians. That’s the genesis of today’s bank misgovernance and losses. The economy has grown 50 times since, so the misgovernance and losses have risen too. But in essence, Vijay Mallya is simply a new avatar of Sanjay Gandhi.

After Talwar’s travails, pre-nationalization financial discipline was quickly destroyed. Loans were given to dud businesses and dud social projects (like loan melas to woo political vote banks). How many defaulters did nationalized banks remove from control of their businesses? Virtually none, since they had all bought political protection. Regional rural banks (RRBs) did indeed penetrate the countryside, a social plus. But they lost vast sums and had to be merged with the big banks.

By the early 1980s, the bad loans of banks exceeded their equity capital. Technically, they were bankrupt. But given government ownership, that was not even news. After all, public sector behemoths had always lost huge sums, and been replenished indefinitely by the taxpayer.

By the 1980s, nationalized banks were okaying highly inflated project costs that enabled promoters to skim off the excess. Banks “evergreened” bad loans (renewing them indefinitely) instead of admitting they were unpayable, taking over the assets of borrowers and auctioning them. Unpaid and unpayable dues were listed as “receivables”. And all receivables, believe it or not, were classified as “income”, even though nothing was coming in.

Banking doyen Narayan Vaghul told me at the time that most bank profits were fictional, since they were based on receivables that were never received. On this fictional income the banks declared profits, and even paid corporate tax. And those that had no cash borrowed money to pay the taxes!

That sad farce has continued ever since, in greater or lesser measure. Politicians have continued phoning bank managers. And at budget time finance ministers announce a host of schemes to be financed by the banks, a political diktat.

Governments have the right to lay down lending priorities. But bank funds are actually the resources of citizen savers, not the government. So, politicians should not force banks to hold loan melas for vote banks, or go easy on favoured borrowers.

Modi has brought in reforms aiming to provide more honest, independent bank chiefs and boards. This may improve matters. But the process is hardly foolproof, and can be reversed by a future government.

Private sector banks (like ICICI Bank) have also been hit by bad loans in problem sectors like infrastructure and metals. But they avoided the worst loan proposals that nationalized banks happily accepted, with disastrous results. The private banks lent on commercial principles, not political orders. Probably bank privatization alone can ensure commercial discipline in future. But no political party wants that.

2 thoughts on “Banks will remain political fiefdoms till privatized”

This is Rakesh Mukherjee. I am a big fan of your writing. It always gives me so much to think. I have read one of your articles recently somewhere regarding the water controversy in IPL. Its basically the your analyse on the co-relation between the consumption of water by individual and usage of water during IPL match. Will you pl;ease do me favour by sharing the link of that article? Thanks, Rakesh

The remedy prescribed is worse than the disease. Former Indian Bank CMD Gopalakrishnan has been in and out of the jails. He seems to enjoy it and the publicity. There are enough cronies to bail him out. I expect similar developments with the present IOB MD, Canara Bank MD, SBI CEO, and so on. Whatever the Mallyas owe to the banks should be recovered from these errant executives of the banks, whose sinecures are a burden to ordinary people. They should also be punished for their corrupt deals and misappropriation of public funds. When a senior officer of IOB told me on phone that the debt to IOB is only Rs. 142 crore, my response was it is a huge lot of money. There should be clear and transparent rules (accessible under the RTI Act) about loans from banks; these should be displayed on the websites. The accountability of the Finance Ministry is also important. Some of the executives get a lot of publicity in the media which is obviously used to spirit away public funds. The IOB MD has been in a leading newspaper more than once in a short time. The SBI lady was walking the talk to Shekhar Gupta’s serenade . We do not know how much Shekhar Gupta gets and how much the lady gets in turn from unknown sources. RBI governor Rajan should also be probed for his recent defensive statement that defaulters’ details should not be disclosed.﻿